Bentley - Wild animals I have known: Polk Street diaries and after

WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN

Polk Street Diaries and After

Kevin Bentley

Published by Chelsea Station Editions atSmashwords

Copyright 2002 and 2016 by Kevin Bentley. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced inany form without written permission from the publisher, except by areviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review whereappropriate credit is given; nor may any part of this book bereproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in anyform or by any meanselectronic, photocopying, recording, orotherwithout specific written permission from thepublisher.

Book design by Peachboy Distillery &Design

Cover photo courtesy of the author

Published by Chelsea Station Editions

362 West 36th Street, Suite 2R

New York, NY 10018

www.chelseastationeditions.com

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Print ISBN: 978-1-937627-28-7

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-937627-66-9

Library of Congress Control Number:2016940538

Originally published in 2002 by Green CandyPress.

Some proper names and details have been changed inthe following autobiographical account to protect the privacy ofliving individuals.

The entries beginning with March 3,1996 and ending with November 30, 1996 first appeared as Reasonsto Live in Afterwords: Real Sex from GayMens Diaries , published by Alyson Books.

For Cora McClure

We come to youas from the dead. The things about which you ask us have been deadto us for many years. In bringing them to our minds we are callingthem from the dead, and when we have told you about them they willgo back to the dead, to remain forever.
Moses Old Bull

WILDANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN

1977

August 13, 1977

Every boy or girl must make a break and leavehome sooner or later, and if he or she is gay, its probably soonerand a bit further. One day I was finishing up summer sessioncourses and dreading student teaching in the fall, and the next Iwas following the black Magic Markered route on a series of creasedhighway maps to San Francisco in a red, 69 VW with my worldlypossessions in the back seat and $500 in Travelers Checks in mysock. My crime? Id met a man at the Pet Shop and stayed out allnight, again.

Maybe youll be happy where there areothers like you, Mom said, wiping her eyes.

Queer! Fairy! Faggot! saidDad.

When the attendant at a fillingstation in Needles glanced at my Texas license plates and askedwith a wink if it was true everything in Texas is bigger, I knew I washeaded in the right direction.

That was three weeks ago. Now here Iam in my Planet of the Apes red polyester tunic with the little cat-eared,pointy-breasted silhouette dancing on the shoulder patch, balancingmy notebook behind the popcorn machine at the concession counter Ioperate 5:30 to 2:30 A.M. five nights a week here at the PussycatErotic Theater on Market Street. Last week I walked all overdowntown leaving rsums first at bookstores, then trying anything.Stuart, the evil leather queen manager here, called right away.(Im going to take a chance on you, Kevin, he said sternly,looking me up and down. Youd think I was applying to the navalacademy.) Three years of English lit, history, and creative writinghave more than qualified me for serving up stale popcorn, flatsoda, and petrified hot dogs to a very odd assortment of patronsand answering the constantly ringing phone to say, Thats right,tonights three-hour features are OrientalBabysitter and StickyFingers . Most of the callers are creeps who wait forthe spiel and then say something like, You know what? Im comingdown there and Im going to cut your prick off and feed it to you.Just a moment, sir, you must be looking for Stuart.

But Im lucky to have found somethingwithout having to quite stoop to fast food. Ive only glimpsed theflicks themselves; theyre straight, though my colleagues mostlyare not. What I saw made me disinclined to see more: western musicwas playing and a cowgirl was shitting into a cowboy hat. Huh? Ifeel Ive definitely jumped in at the deep end; I stand here forhours watching the most bizarre parade of people out of a MaxFleisher cartoon cavorting past the blinking lightbulbs that framethe lobby.

I punch a broken antique cash registerbehind this joke concession stand (on which the keys are so greasyits hard to hit them effectively), tear tickets at the door andshoot the breeze with an eighty-year-old cashier named SadieBlumenthal who says shes been selling tickets since silent films.Shes the perky kind; says things like Im just as young as any ofthese kids, I tell you! and punctuates her remarks with a littleCharleston shuffle and kick. Therere a couple of other gay cloneguys whore unaccountably unfriendly, as if I might threaten theirseniority here at the Pussycat Academy.

As I write Im stopping to ring up drinks(Id like a diet Pepsi and a Coke, please. Sorry, all we have isthis grape stuff.) or flashlight people to their seats (shadowyfigures scrambling to a sitting position as the thin beam hitsthem. The porn may be straight, but my impression is that basicallyscary people are back there sucking off even scarier people in themurky darkness). Our hottest item at the concession stand isnapkins; most people grab a handful on their way in, withoutstopping for a delicious snack.

This, for now, is the price of my ticket tostay here in Disneyland and walk among the painted dollhouses,rumbling green streetcars, mustached men with shocking bulges intheir crotches, and the chilling, unreal daily fog that bluntssound like a mattress.

September 18, 1977

I went with Buddy and Fred to see TedHughes read on August 7 at the Museum of Modern Art. He looks nowlike one of the illustrations by Leonard Baskin in Crow , from which he mostly read.Reading Heptonstall Cemetery he intoned a series of names on thetombstones; when he reached Sylvia, an excited murmuring sweptthe audience. But the biggest excitement came just as he walked upto the mike and opened his mouth to begin. The double doors at theback of the auditorium burst open and smacked the wall with a loudbang and the crazed, presumably estranged boyfriend of along-black-skirted, pony-tailed girl in the audience ran down theaisle ripping pages from a book and screaming at her as she stoodand wrung her hands, You Sylvia Plath whore! Sylvia Plath bitch!An elderly British woman seated behind us rapped on the floor withher cane and shouted, Call a constable! Security guards draggedhim back down the aisle, still yelling abuse, and out the doors,and Ted, unsmiling, cleared his throat and began to read withoutcomment.

Ive been fucking around a lot since I gothere, but no real boyfriend as yet. When I first arrived inmid-July, I was taken straight into bed by my new roommates, Buddyand Fred. Buddy and Id done it plenty back in El Paso; Freds thelover hes moved out here from Austin with and now seems to beleaving. A friend of a co-worker at the Pussycat came home with mebut annoyed me by giving me a pedantic lecture on how to give aproper blowjob. He was my first professional clone: big,half-tumescent dick arrayed just so in his jeans, keys to nowhere,as Buddy and I like to say, jangling on his left hip, and thatpathetic colored hanky thing (which always reminds me of WesternDay in grade school).

A few days before giving my notice atthe Pussycat (upon which I was angrily informed by Stuart, whosenose and upper lip were inflamed from a mishap with a bottle ofpoppers, that Id never work for Pussycat Corporation again, ever ), I walked home at 3:30 A.M.with Johnny, the muscular, gap-toothed, married Puerto Rican guywith whom Id been working my shift. He talked about fucking womenall the way back to the Noe Street flat, as we passed a bottle ofred wine back and forth and smoked a tiny joint of doubtful contenthed providedthen, back in my narrow room next to the airshaft, Isucked his purple-headed, funky uncut dick while he slugged at thewarm wine and mumbled about popping cherries. The next day I gotthe phone call from Mrs. Eidenmueller, owner of the large,forty-year-old bookstore with the black awnings out front next toCrocker Plaza: The position is yours, if you want it.